Grow up!

My birthday is on Sunday. I bring that up b/c I am about to be 29 years old, and that is a foreign concept to me. Granted, 29 is not old at all, but it just seems weird that I am “29 and holding.” Ha. Well, minus the holding part. I find it hard to wrap my head around that fact. At this point in life, I am not holding, though. I want to age. When I am “old”, I want to have white hair and be bouncing a grandkid on my lap, afterwards, handing her a quarter and telling her not to spend it all in one place (quarters will probably be non-existent by the time we have grandkids!). Luckily, the white hair trait runs in the maternal side of my family.

I am well aware that I am no longer a child, no longer on my father’s tax returns as a dependent, no longer borrowing 20 bucks from Dad to gallivant all over the local mall. I have my own 401k, my own car purchased by my own money, I have an awesome grown-up job, I have a husband, my very own rented apartment, and everything we have is either in my name or in Josh’s. Yeah, a lot of things I mention are about money, but a large part of being an adult is financial responsibility.

Another reason I know I’m getting older is that the youngest kids I instruct in the band were born during my senior year of high school. If that doesn’t hit home, then I’m an idiot.

So where in life was this sudden transition from childhood to adulthood? Of course, it happened over time, probably somewhere between high school and getting married. I know for sure that I was no adult in college. I thought I was, though. That’s when Mom and I had our “creative differences” about me. Though, we worked them out, and moving out with Josh helped. We were probably just getting a little too much of each other.

I knew I was starting to become an adult way before then, but I refused to take on ALL of the responsibilities of being grown and independent. Only now that Josh and I are on our own do I realize what it really takes to be an adult and responsible for oneself. Some people don’t even have to grow up, as they have had and will continue to have everything handed to them on the silver platter that Mom and Dad’s good investments bought for them – good for them. I’m not one of those people. My parents struggled (for various reasons, none of which had anything to do with being irresponsible, mind you), and we will probably struggle. We don’t have any problems right now, but we might in the future. We don’t have our house yet, and everyone says that we might not have MORE bills, but the bills we have now will be larger.

The job Josh has currently has a one week unpaid shutdown (I consider it a temporary lay-off) during December, which pisses me off to no end. During the hardest time of the year for some people, we get half our family income. Yeah, it’s only a week, so you say, but think about what would happen to you if you lost 1/8 of your monthly income. Some bills would suffer. We are already saving now for the week, but it’s really hard to do so. Christmas will have to suffer, and that’s hard for me to accept. Though, it’s something that must be done. We just can’t spend on our loved ones like we did the past two years. Luckily, I already have some $$ from band checks to cover most of my Christmas $$ allotment, but I won’t be able to spend as much on Josh this year b/c of all this.

Enough of being introspective – time for lunch.